Hospital Group Urges Moves To Prepare for Blood Shortage

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

Published: August 15, 2001

The association that represents hospitals in the New York metropolitan area is urging its members to start blood drives and make other moves to cope with a blood shortage that may result from a federal proposal to prohibit donations from people who may have been exposed to mad cow disease in Europe.

In a letter dated yesterday, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, Kenneth E. Raske, warns hospital officials to prepare for the worst if the donor restrictions are implemented. They could, for example, necessitate the rationing of blood by postponing elective surgical procedures, like hip replacement surgery and other nonemergency procedures, he said in a separate interview.

Mr. Raske said that his decision to send the letter was prompted by a recent meeting between representatives of his organization and federal officials who are considering the donor restrictions. In the meeting, he said, federal officials repeatedly asked what New York was doing to prepare for a looming blood shortage.

Mr. Raske said that he and others at the meeting took the questioning to mean that the federal government would approve the donor restrictions, though federal officials have yet to announce their decision. ''It was a tough meeting,'' he said. ''They said we should begin preparing for disaster.''

The meeting was also attended by representatives of the New York State Department of Health as well as a senior aide to Senator Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat from New York. Mr. Schumer said he was troubled by the tone of the meeting.

''I am just really both angry and frustrated by what took place,'' he said. ''The tone of what they said was that the blood shortage was a New York blood bank problem, not their problem.''

The donor restrictions were proposed by the Food and Drug Administration because concerns over tainted blood have risen in recent months with the spread of mad cow disease across Britain and, to a lesser degree, the rest of Europe. The restrictions would be issued nationally, but experts say the New York region would be the most adversely affected because it is the only place in the country that imports blood from Europe.

The donor restrictions were endorsed by an F.D.A. advisory panel last month. It calls for excluding blood donations from anyone who has spent five years or more in Europe since 1980, or three months or more in Britain from 1980 to 1996. The effect would be a ban on blood imports from Europe, potentially disrupting medical care in the New York region.

Health care experts inside and outside the F.D.A. said that they expected the recommendations to be adopted by the agency as early as next spring. In his letter, Mr. Raske urged hospital officials to undertake a campaign to increase blood donations and ''engage in contingency planning in preparation for a potential decrease in the blood supply.''

New York health care officials and the Pentagon are still trying to hammer out a plan that calls for the United States military to ship surplus blood from its bases abroad to the New York metropolitan region. But no agreement on that plan has yet been announced.